General Question

What is your vision of a better world?

I’d like you to envision a future 50 years from now, where the world is distinctly better in some regards then the present in your mind.
What would a slightly feasible and maybe even probable “better” future look like to you. Feel free to describe any aspect of it that you wish, whatever makes you the most passionate.
Be as specific as you would like and please release yourself to dream a little. I’m curious to see what everyone comes up with.

52 Answers

I want the option to jump on a high speed rail and go somewhere during the weekends I don’t work. That would be sweet.

I would expect minute social change regarding tolerance and equal rights. Maybe we’ll get lucky and add a few more states to those that let its citizens get married. Although, I don’t expect much from politics and government.

I envision the possibility that small fusion generators will come to market as consumer products (you’ll have a small nuke plant in your basement next to your furnace and water heater). This will help humanity in so many ways!

1.) Every home will have its own power generator that provided essentially free electric power.

2.) It’ll solve our energy crisis and dependence on fossil fuels.

3.) It’ll all but stop global warming as there will no longer be a need to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity and release CO2 into the atmosphere.

4.) It’ll be a first step in ending human slavery to wealthy corporate executives by making utility companies irrelevant and putting them out of business (just as the motor car put buggy whip manufacturers out of business).

5.) Terrorists will have one less target (central power plants) to attack and cripple other countries.

6.) Even without deliberate terrorist attacks, accidents will not be able to cause nationwide power failures that last several days as happened once already.

7.) High-tension power lines that cris-cross and blight the landscape will be a thing of the past.

My vision for a better world includes a major shift in human interaction, from the “what’s in it for me” mind set to “how can I make the world a better place” mind set. If every issue was approached from that perspective, the world would, indeed, be a better place.

hahah. when I was in highschool I walked into my friend’s apartment to see them building this contraption out of chicken wire, chanting TWO CATS ENTER ONE CAT LEAVES TWO CATS ENTER ONE CAT LEAVES…they were making a kitty thunderdome because they hated their roommates cats…mostly joking but really excited about it.
Don’t worry no cats were injured.

(I apologize for the off topic)

anyhow: in a better world there would be less deceit,
and money wouldn’t be the underlying factor of everything.

@JLeslie I think so, though perhaps not officially. You’d have to ask @ragingloli.
Star Trek socialism works because they have created a way to have effectively unlimited resources. Society is able to produce all that a person could want, all for what he can afford.
The Borg underscore the evils of excessive enforcement of that system. They do not lack, but they cannot want. Plus there’s the whole part where they’re forcibly converted. Maybe they’re really symbolic of a brainwashing cult. Perhaps they’re a dig at the fandom!

@Nullo Cult makes sense. I agree there are unlimited resources, but I don’t think that would competely solve what doesn’t work with communism. Never really thought about it though. In Singapore something like 80% of citizens live in public housing. It is thought that if people don’t have to worry about something basic like shelter, they can focus on being productive. Not sure how it all plays out though. But, Star Trek everything is provided. I wonder what would happen if someone was a slacker in their job?

@JLeslie The writers are relentlessly optimistic about the human condition (that it functions at all on the money end is from the resources). Slackers probably get therapy’d., edging us into creepy Borg territory. Or else, given this relentless optimism, the productive people of the Federation sigh amicably and shoulder their slacking brother’s burden, never once thinking of dropping their own troubles. Discipline on the ships is one thing, but the rest of society?

At present, they can only make individual parts out of plastic, and you have to assemble the parts together by hand to get the finished product. And, today, it probably would cost more to buy a “3D printed” wrench than to go to Home Depot and buy a steel one. But the technology is still in its infancy.

This will spell the beginning of the end of the monetary economy, because anyone can make almost anything they want. It has the potential to end enslavement of the poor and middle class to the wealthy corporate executives who trap us in debt to them for our whole lives, and confiscate all our money in the name of “free trade.”

@HungryGuy Ah, but think of the impact on manufacturing! One replicator would allow a company to fire its entire production staff. One fired production staff member would leak the replicator plans to the Internet, and before very long, nobody would ever buy manufactured goods ever again.

Still, production might just be enough to outpace the new demand for food and water and shelter in the wake of the collapse. Heck, once the economy is restructured to be able to cope with such sudden abundance, things might indeed turn for the better. Prestige would be the only currency that mattered, unless product data got DRMd. Interesting thought.

@Nullo – Right, that is a big problem. New paradigms always put lots of people out of work. That’s one of the arguing points against national health care: it’ll put thousands of people in the health insurance industry on the street.

But think of the end result… No more money. No need to work for a living! Fusion generators in everyone’s basement gives us our power for free with no impact to the environment. Nobody has to work for a living. We’re all free to pursue our artistic interests (and in that vein, no more DRM or copyright lawsuits), or just lounge around the pool all day if that’s your whim, or commune with God for that matter (and, yes, I believe in God even though I doubt that the Christian Bible can possibly be the uncorrupted and literal word of a kind and just God…but that’s a debate for another day :-).

The end of money will spell the end of crimes such as theft and burglary and fraud. No more drug crimes (sure, people will always make drugs, but without the insane profits, drug pushers will be a thing of the past). No more prostitution (people will still have casual sex, but because they enjoy it, not for the money). No more spam or people advertising endless crap in our faces everywhere we turn.

@HungryGuy I dunno about the spam. People are going to be jerks no matter how good the technology is. This downtime will lead to boredom, which will turn to petty nonsense – DDOSing a replicator, for instance, or a trojan that causes it to produce an endless stream of someone’s dirty underwear.Incidentally, the Bible states that a man who refuses to work or otherwise make himself useful shouldn’t eat.

@Nullo – Right. People will still be jerks. But without the profit motive, spam and trojans will merely be the product of juvenile pranksters. There will be no identity theft, or credit card fraud. These will be minor annoyances rather than life-destroying crimes.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m a fairly creative person. I could easily occupy an eternity in creative pursuits such as writing, creating music, etc. Such activities are also a form of work that contributes to civilization and culture. And if you feel the need to do manual labor, for whatever reason, nothing will be stopping you…

As for the Bible, I believe that passage you refer to is open to interpretation. God may be be saying that it’s a sin to refuse to provide for yourself and so be a burden on others. But I don’t necessarily see it as contradicting Thessalonians if you have the technology to provide for your needs, thus giving you a surplus of leisure time without being a burden on anyone else.

@HungryGuy The general idea seems to be not to be a burden to others, and that slackers make mischief, so don’t slack. In brief: don’t make a nuisance of yourself.

I feel that we need to do something constructive to occupy our time, or be the worse for it. Endless leisure would be the end of me.

I’d love to have one, even a small one. It would be just the thing for my hobbies! I’d love to see what the stock market does the day that they hit stores. And I’d like to see the stores’ reactions. Money is going to cling until the bitter end, you know. I wonder if anybody would sell them, or if it would be the ultimate open-source DIY.

@Nullo – Right. Don’t be a burden to others, and don’t make a nuisance of yourself. I agree wholeheartedly.

And I also agree that most of us want and need to to something constructive. But that something doesn’t need to be driving a cement truck, selling used cars, or sitting behind a desk and going to meetings 8 hours a day. Freed from the need to earn money to eat, that something can be writing, composing music, making art, performing theatre, doing scientific or medical research, teaching, or whatever else you want_to do…

@GracieT – I used to be an uber Libertarian. But the events leading up to the Great Recession have caused me to become more moderate and left-leaning. I’m still somewhat of a libertarian in that I generally believe that what people do in private that’s peaceful and mutually consensual should be legal. But, unfortunately, what people do in public as a business needs scrutiny. There needs to be safety nets, and consumer protections, and mechanisms to prevent the rich from confiscating everyone else’s money in the name of “free trade.”

@HungryGuy, I’m 41. I think that my sense of what’s right has much to do with my injury. Because of my settlement, I don’t have to work. Because I FINALLY won SSD I have Medicare, so although I spend $1500 every three months for medicine I can afford my astronomical health care bills. But I am one of the far too few TBI survivors with as serious an injury as mine is that can afford to live comfortably, not have to skimp to be able to barely survive. I also am an environmentalist and a Democratic Socialist. I’m one of the Evangelical Christians no one can figure out.